The end of the Castro era provides new opportunities on Cuba - opinion

As Raúl Castro exits the scene, ending 62 years of Castro tyranny, many questions abound. One thing, however, is perfectly clear: Decades of US sanctions have failed. And miserably.

By PETER SUBISSATI
Updated: MAY 8, 2021 16:55
CUBAN PRESIDENT and Communist Party First Secretary Miguel Díaz-Canel joins hands with Raúl Castro during the closing session of the Congress of the Communist Party in Havana last month. (photo credit: ARIEL LEY ROYERO/ACN VIA REUTERS)
CUBAN PRESIDENT and Communist Party First Secretary Miguel Díaz-Canel joins hands with Raúl Castro during the closing session of the Congress of the Communist Party in Havana last month.
(photo credit: ARIEL LEY ROYERO/ACN VIA REUTERS)
When President Joe Biden spoke to a deeply divided nation on January 20, a Castro was watching his 15th presidential inaugural address as head of Cuba’s Communist Party.
For more than six decades, the cast has changed in Washington, but the plot has remained very much the same. Twelve presidents have succeeded Dwight D. Eisenhower, and not a single one has come even remotely close to breaking their stranglehold over Cuba.
As Raúl Castro exits the scene, ending 62 years of Castro tyranny, many questions abound. One thing, however, is perfectly clear: Decades of US sanctions have failed. And miserably.
Far from destabilizing the Castro brothers, sanctions only strengthened their hand and emboldened their ruthless regime. Even as they crushed dissent and plundered what little was left of the island’s wealth, the Castros could always point to external forces and an American embargo that has succeeded in little else than bringing the average Cuban to their knees.
As Cuban Communists welcome the nomination of Raúl’s handpicked successor Miguel Díaz-Canel as the party’s first secretary, the regime remains firmly intact.
Since assuming Cuba’s presidency in 2019, Díaz-Canel has delivered a handful of cosmetic reforms including granting greater Internet access for besieged Cubans and doing away with the country’s dual-currency system. The latter reform has done nothing but diminish the purchasing power of cash-strapped Cubans who continue to languish from the three-pronged effects of the Communist Party’s iron-clad control of the economy, crippling US sanctions and a nagging pandemic that has significantly worsened their plight.
If weakening the regime remains the objective, America is no closer to that end than it was in 1961 when it severed diplomatic relations with Cuba. It is high time for a different approach.
While Díaz-Canel bears all the hallmarks of a transitional caretaker figure, recent history should remind observers that the same was said of Nicolás Maduro, who assumed Venezuela’s presidency after Hugo Chávez’s death in 2013. Nearly a decade later, Maduro’s bloody hold on power is no more threatened today than it was after the botched 2019 coup that failed to topple him.
With the last Castro finally out of the picture, the Biden administration now finds itself in an enviable position to end its impasse with Cuba.
While Cuba’s Communist regime shows very few imminent signs of crumbling, Cubans have grown increasingly apathetic, and that should worry Díaz-Canel. Any shrewd leader knows that apathy does not bode well in the long term. In order to avert a quick descent into instability, Cuba’s new supreme leader has two choices: greater repression or seeking a lifeline abroad, when patrons are in short supply.

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For President Biden, the choice should be even clearer: seizing a once-in-two-generations opportunity to engage constructively with Cuba – think Reagan to Gorbachev in the waning days of the Cold War – or risk creating another Nicolás Maduro with an ever-bolder China as his main benefactor.
For far too long, America’s Cuba policy has been an abject failure. To begin healing the longstanding rift, President Biden should use the next 100 days to reverse the vindictive measures put in place by the former administration. A good place to start is by ending America’s futile embargo against Cuba, once and for all.
Re-engagement with a tired regime is a small price to pay to strengthen the prospect of systemic change from within, and sends a strong and unequivocal message to long-suffering Cubans that America supports their right to define a democratic future for their country.
While we’re at it, the time is also ripe for the next Israeli government to follow suit and seek a long-overdue rapprochement of its own with Cuba. Canada, which facilitated back-channel talks with Havana in 2016, would surely be happy to oblige. The ball is in Jerusalem’s court.
The writer is a Canadian-based communications professional who served as a member of Israel’s delegation to the International Civil Aviation Organization from 2011-2018. He has traveled extensively in Cuba.


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